IST Research

Press Release

IST Research Selected as a Prime Contractor for the DARPA Memex Program

IST Research has been awarded $7 million to perform as a prime contractor on the Domain Specific Indexing and Applications areas of the DARPA Memex Program.

Fredericksburg, VA, July 24, 2014 --(PR.com)-- IST Research has been selected to lead two critical technical areas of the DARPA Memex program, which seeks to develop the next generation of search technologies and revolutionize the discovery, organization and presentation of search results.

The IST team will serve as the prime contractor on the Domain Specific Indexing and Applications areas of the project. Work on the Domain Specific Indexing area will seek to address two related challenges. First, the degree to which the domain-specific index and the subsequent searches are accurate is highly sensitive to the accuracy of the extracted information. Second, information extraction from unstructured media found through the World Wide Web is a difficult problem that leads to inaccurate indexing and search results.

Technology components and concrete examples from IST Research’s human trafficking work will drive the development of domain-independent infrastructure in the Applications area of the Memex program. The IST team will apply reusable components and instantiation methodologies from the exploration of the human trafficking domain to additional domains such as fundamental research, counterfeit goods, or epidemiology. Within each stage, their efforts will be focused around three primary tasks: domain definition and data science, requirements generation and system design, and feedback for hardening and transition.

“We’re eager to build on the expertise that we’ve developed over the last 12 months. This new resource has the potential to change the way difficult search-oriented challenges are solved, starting with counter human trafficking efforts. What better way to affect change than through an issue of such global importance?” said IST Research founder and CEO, Ryan Paterson.

The full Memex program will kick off in September. In the lead up to launch, the IST team will continue DARPA support on preliminary work. Program partners in both technical areas will be named in the future, and will include representatives from both industry and academia.

Find out more about IST Research at www.istresearch.com

About IST ResearchIST Research is a small business that innovates technologies and processes to meet challenges around the world. Our work ranges from conversing with locals in Afghanistan to digitizing healthcare in Zambia to countering human trafficking through open data. Help us reinvent the way to communicate the edge, maximizing impact, minimizing conflict, mitigating risks, and engineering win-win solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.